To truly understand the essence of the concept of UNALIENABLE rights, and therefore to truly understand the essence of the American republic and our national claim to self-government in liberty, you have to first understand that you are entitled to absolutely NOTHING that God hasn't given you title to, and that even if God gives you title to something, it's only as a tenant.

As the Sovereign, eternal, absolute Owner of everything, He can repossess anything He's lent you - including your very life itself - whenever and however He pleases, while remaining perfectly righteous, holy, and just in doing so.

But, as long as you are His lawful tenant, living within His legitimate grant of tenancy, no other man can rightfully, legitimately, lawfully, strip you of God's generous gifts, which include your right to live, your right to live freely, and your right to own and possess private property -- all, of course, within the natural moral limits posed by the legitimate exercise of the rights of others.

In summary, legitimate human government exists to protect your legitimate God-given rights, and the legitimate rights of everyone else, while acting as a punisher of evil, and an adjudicator of conflicts that may arise between your exercise of rights and the exercise by others of their rights.

Human governments that violate God-given rights, or fail to resist evil, or that act unrighteously or unjustly, only delegitimize and destroy themselves. They don't, they can't, change the natural law as created and instituted by God.

This, my friends, is the first principle, the cornerstone principle, of our country. If this understanding is not soon fully restored in the hearts, minds, and political and governmental practices of America, this building cannot long stand. Our national destruction is inevitable. Our fall may come by degrees, or it may come all of a sudden. Only the omniscient, omnipotent Creator of us all knows that. But you can be sure, it WILL come. The laws of nature and nature's God will not be mocked nor ignored for long.

"We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable rights, that among these are life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness. That to secure these rights, Governments are instituted among Men, deriving their just powers from the consent of the governed..."

Tom Hoefling:"The powers not delegated to the United States by the Constitution, nor prohibited by it to the states, are reserved to the states respectively, or to the people." -- The Tenth Amendment to the U.S. Constitution

Those who see the corruption and abuse of power that permeates Washington, DC, while ignoring the corruption in our state capitals, are making a terrible mistake.

Tenth Amendment supporters need to take the time and effort to extend the crucial principles and the indispensable logic of that great amendment to the state level. If powers are not granted by We the People to our state governments via our state constitutions, those powers do not legitimately exist. For the states to claim and exercise them is a lawless usurpation and tyranny.

One last thing: No government, national or otherwise, has any legitimate power to violate the God-given, unalienable, equal rights of the individual person. In the case of those rights, governments - all governments - possess only the absolute, imperative duty to defend. Nothing else. Because the fulfillment of that duty is the primary reason all governments, and all government offices, exist.

That assertion is the foundation stone of our national political creed:

"We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable rights, that among these are life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness. That to secure these rights, Governments are instituted among Men, deriving their just powers from the consent of the governed..." -- The Declaration of Independence

"Government, in my humble opinion, should be formed to secure and to enlarge the exercise of the natural rights of its members; and every government, which has not this in view, as its principal object, is not a government of the legitimate kind."

'Our liberties we prize and our rights we will maintain.'

Tom Hoefling on Government:

"Just as 'good fences make for good neighbors,' good government is mainly about knowing where the legitimate boundaries are, and having the courage to defend those borders forcefully. This is true in terms of the defense of our territory, our security, and our national sovereignty, but it also applies to the sworn duty of all of those in government to equally protect the God-given, unalienable rights of each individual person, from their creation onward, their sacred obligation to stay well within the enumerated powers of our constitutions, and of the role legitimate government must play in balancing the competing rights and interests of the people, in order to establish justice."